The phrase “network-centric warfare” is widely used today to refer to the fact that military operations have grown increasingly reliant on the ability to exchange, process, and act upon information created by any unit operating within a “network”. This information can be used for a variety of applications including the creation and maintenance of a common track picture, local and network-wide command and decision processing, and local and network-wide engagement planning and execution. The degree to which any of this functionality can be properly and effectively discharged is highly dependent on the accuracy of the data being exchanged and the ability to combine or fuse that data in a coherent fashion. To a large extent, this accuracy will be dictated by the degree to which the sensor and navigation data from each of the participating platforms can be aligned and brought into a common reference frame, in particular the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS-84) earth model and the Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) standard.
When sensor platforms exchange track information on the tactical data links, units often attempt to correlate incoming “remote” tracks with tracks formed by “local” sensors to determine which objects are held in common (and who should report on it) and which are unique (and thus need to be reported by the local unit). If these tracks are not properly aligned, the likelihood of making correct correlation decisions is significantly reduced, leading to a plethora of problems in maintaining and using local and remote track data. The alignment of multiple “remote unit” sensor and navigation data with a “local” unit's sensor and navigation data is known as “Remote Unit” or “Interface Unit (IU)” Data Registration. What is needed therefore are techniques to estimate the remote unit sensor and navigation errors relative to the local unit and to remove those remote unit errors so the remote data is correctly aligned with the local data for the same tracked objects.